Athanassios (Thanos) Economou is Professor at the School of Architecture in the College of Design, and Adjunct Professor at the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Economou’s teaching and research are in the areas of shape grammars, computational design, computer-aided design and design theory, with over sixty published papers in these areas. He is the Director of the Shape Computation Lab, a research group that explores how the visual nature of shape can be formally implemented with new technologies to enable new paradigms in visual computation, design automation, creative design and digital heritage. Recent projects include the Shape Machine, a new computational technology that allows shape matching in CAD systems, and Courtsweb, the most significant visual database on Federal Courthouses, sponsored by GSA and US.Courts. Design projects from his studios at Georgia Tech have received prestigious awards in international and national architectural competitions. He has been invited to give talks, seminars, and workshops at several universities including MIT, Harvard, TU Vienna, U. Michigan, KAIST, Chiao Tung U Taiwan, Emory, Seoul National U, Cambridge U, Tsinghua U, UCLA, NTUA, U.Thessaly, U.Aegean, among others. Dr. Economou holds a Diploma in Architecture from NTUA, Athens, Greece, an M.Arch from USC, and a PhD in Architecture from UCLA.

Animesh Garg is a Stephen Fleming Early Career Assistant Professor at School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. He leads the People, AI, and Robotics (PAIR) research group. He is on the core faculty in the Robotics and Machine Learning programs. Animesh is also a Senior Researcher at Nvidia Research. Animesh earned a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and was a postdoc at the Stanford AI Lab. He is on leave from the department of Computer Science at University of Toronto and CIFAR Chair position at the Vector Institute.

Garg earned his M.S. in Computer Science and Ph.D. in Operations Research from UC, Berkeley. He worked with Ken Goldberg at Berkeley AI Research (BAIR). He also worked closely with Pieter Abbeel, Alper Atamturk & UCSF Radiation Oncology. Animesh was later a postdoc at Stanford AI Lab with Fei-Fei Li and Silvio Savarese.

Garg's research vision is to build the Algorithmic Foundations for Generalizable Autonomy, that enables robots to acquire skills, at both cognitive & dexterous levels, and to seamlessly interact & collaborate with humans in novel environments. His group focuses on understanding structured inductive biases and causality on a quest for general-purpose embodied intelligence that learns from imprecise information and achieves flexibility & efficiency of human reasoning.

Kala Jordan, research scientist at the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT), brings a wealth of academic achievement and professional expertise to her role. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology with a specialized focus on cellular, molecular, and developmental biology, coupled with a master of science in health informatics, Kala's educational background underscores her multidisciplinary approach to research. Her professional endeavors are underscored by a diverse spectrum of research interests, spanning from healthcare system innovation, STEM education, and data analysis. At present, Kala is immersed in supporting the AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING) project. In this capacity, she spearheads studies aimed at bolstering the development of personalized collaborative AI systems tailored to enhance the quality of life for older adults. In addition to her pivotal role within the AI-CARING project, Kala actively contributes to STEM @ GTRI’s rural education initiative. Here, she assumes a multifaceted role, providing direct instruction and contributing to curriculum development in various facets of computer science for high school students. Through, her multifaceted research efforts and educational outreach, Kala Jordan exemplifies a consummate professional dedicated to leveraging cutting-edge technology and empirical insights to address pressing societal challenges and empower individuals through education and innovation.

Shaowen Bardzell is Chair and Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Interactive Computing.

Bardzell holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University and pursues a humanistic research agenda within the research and practice of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). A common thread throughout her work is the exploration of the contributions of feminism, design, and social science to support technology’s role in social change. Recent research topics include care ethics and feminist utopian perspectives on IT, research through design, women’s health, posthumanist approaches to sustainable design, computational agriculture and food justice, and cultural and creative industries in Asia. Her work is supported by the National Science Foundation, Intel Corporation, and the Mellon Foundation, among others.

She is the co-editor of Critical Theory and Interaction Design (MIT Press, 2018) and co-author of Humanistic HCI (Morgan & Claypool, 2015). 

Jill Gambill is the Executive Director and Senior Research Associate for the Coastal Equity and Resilience Hub in the Institute of People and Technology (IPaT) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Gambill previously spent over 12 years at the University of Georgia, where she most recently served as Coastal Resilience Specialist and Public Service Associate for Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant. In this role, she worked with vulnerable coastal communities to equitably plan for and respond to flooding from storm surge and sea level rise.

In addition to her faculty appointment with Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, she is affiliate faculty with the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems, Institute for Women’s Studies and Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia and Department of Environmental Health at Emory University.

Gambill is co-chair of the Georgia Coastal Hazards Community of Practice, a member of the Practitioner Consultation Board for the NASA Sea Level Change Science Team and part of the leadership team for the Georgia Climate Project, a statewide initiative aimed at strengthening research and communication on the impacts and solutions of climate change in Georgia. Gambill holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Cardiff University in Wales, an M.A. in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Sydney in Australia and is currently completing her Ph.D. in Geography and Integrative Conservation at the University of Georgia. She is a nationally accredited Certified Floodplain Manager.

Dr. Karen Head (Ph.D. University of Nebraska, M.A. University of Tennessee, B.A. Oglethorpe University, A.A. DeKalb College) was previously the Associate Chair and Professor in Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Media, and Communication and Executive Director of the Institute-wide Communication Center. She has been at Georgia Tech since 2004.

In 2020, she was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Fulton County, Georgia.

She is also the editor of Atlanta Review and the immediate past editor of Southern Discourse in the Center: A Journal of Multiliteracy and Innovation.

On a more unusual note, she is currently the Poet Laureate of Waffle House—a title that reflects an outreach program to bring arts awareness to rural high schools in Georgia, which has been generously sponsored by the Waffle House Foundation.

She has published five books of poetry (Lost on Purpose, Sassing, My Paris Year, On Occasion: Four Poets, One Year, and Shadow Boxes) and exhibited acclaimed digital poetry projects. Since 2006, she has been a Visiting Scholar at Technische Universität-Dortmund, Germany, where she serves as primary consultant for their academic tutoring center.

Her research focuses on higher education rhetoric, sustainable and innovative pedagogy and space design, communication theory and pedagogical practice, especially the implementation and development of writing centers, writing program administration, and multidisciplinary communication. Her book, Disrupt This! MOOCs and the Promises of Technology was published by University Press of New England in 2017.

In 2012-13, she was awarded a Georgia Tech Fund for Innovation in Research and Education Grant. Head's classes center on analyzing, critiquing, evaluating, and creating a variety of texts that demonstrate an understanding of audience and adaptation of multimodal rhetorical strategies and tools. Students and colleagues consistently rank her teaching as excellent. In 2012-13, she won the CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Award. In 2019, she was honored with the Georgia Tech Outstanding Service Award.

Christopher J. MacLellan is an Assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, where he leads the Teachable AI Lab (TAIL; https://tail.cc.gatech.edu). His work on cognitive systems aims to advance our understanding of how people teach and learn and to build AI systems that can teach and learn like people do and in ways that are compatible with people. He explores the development of computational models of learning and how these models can support the development of AI technologies, such as intelligent tutoring systems and medical decision support systems, at scale.

He also investigates how data collected about how people learn and make decisions can be leveraged to drive the development of better cognitive models and computational learning systems. Chris has been a principal investigator on multiple sponsored project awards with DARPA, the U.S. Army, ONR, and NSF. He has also received external recognition for his work, such as the 2022 EAAI Now and Future AI Educator award as well as being named on the 2021 Technical.ly RealLIST of technologists building Philadelphia’s future.  

Prior to his position at Georgia Tech, Chris was an Assistant Professor of Information Science and Computer Science (by co-appointment) at Drexel University. Before that, he completed his PhD in Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computing, where he was a fellow in the Program for Interdisciplinary Education Research (PIER).

The products of his work have immediate implications for AI-powered technology development. For example, through his work with the NSF-funded AI ALOE Institute, Chris is developing tools that let teachers build AI-powered tutors by naturally teaching an AI agent rather than programming. His work also has many broader implications, such as enabling doctors to support the development of AI-powered diagnoses tools where few training examples are available (DARPA-funded POCUS project) and for creating personal assistant agents that can engage in collaborative learning to support more effective human-machine teaming (ARL-funded STRONG project).

Research Areas: 

Artificial Intelligence; Cognitive Systems; Cognitive and Learning Sciences; Human-Computer Interaction; Learning Technology.

Clio Andris is an assistant professor in the School of City and Regional Planning and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Her research is on mathematical models of social networks, social flows, and interpersonal relationships in geographic space, applied to issues of urban planning, visualization, transportation and geography. She teaches GIScience classes at multiple levels including Environmental GIS and Spatial Network Analysis, as well as classes on Information Visualization. She is a member of the Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization (CSPAV) and an affiliate of the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development (CQGRD). She is also a member of the School of Interactive Computing's Information Visualization research group. She received her PhD from MIT in 2011 in Urban Information Systems where she was an NDSEG fellow and member of the Senseable City Lab. She held postdoctoral positions at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) at the Santa Fe Institute.

Academic Specialty: 
Geographic Information Science and Technology